


use you as a warning sign

by alchemystique



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 03:53:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16526786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemystique/pseuds/alchemystique
Summary: She remembers what he looked like with broken skin and broken bones and a broken soul. Remembers when he would stumble into her shower and bloody her tub, remembers watching him stitch long, deep cuts in her bathroom mirror.Remembers the way he’d cling to her in silent moments, the way his breath fanned out against her ear, the way his body felt against hers, sweaty skin and labored breath and desperation shared between them, desperation to feel, to live, to be.--Future-fic - Karen struggles to get her shit together.





	use you as a warning sign

She visits twice a year. No more than that, but never less. She’d made a deal, and kept to it. It was all she could do. Considering.

It’s not a small town, not a big one either, the kind of place where you can melt into the scenery and everyone is just busy enough not to bother with you. Quiet, most of the time, though every once in a while there’s a fight at the local bar. At least that’s what he’s told her.

She never sticks around for long. 

He works as a handyman, drives a bright orange van around town and fixes broken walk-ins and windows and heating systems and it’s just so fucking quaint and normal. He has acquaintances, and is a regular at the local coffee shop, he walks the streets during the day and people wave at him, like he’s one of them. 

She remembers what he looked like with broken skin and broken bones and a broken soul. Remembers when he would stumble into her shower and bloody her tub, remembers watching him stitch long, deep cuts in her bathroom mirror. 

Remembers the way he’d cling to her in silent moments, the way his breath fanned out against her ear, the way his body felt against hers, sweaty skin and labored breath and desperation shared between them, desperation to feel, to live, to be.

Remembers the way he’d look at her, when she blinked awake and his hand was there brushing hair out of her eyes, the quiet solace he seemed to pull from the depths of her soul, the hunger in his eyes every time he discovered her life was in danger yet again - the hunger to destroy everything and anything that every thought to harm a hair on her head. She remembers all of it, and she remembers thinking - he’ll die for me.

That was always the worst part of it. Knowing. Knowing he’d take bullets and blades, knowing he’d sacrifice blood to keep her alive. Keep her safe. Keep her whole. Whole as she could be, anyway. 

She remembers the brutality of him, how it had never frightened her. How she’d looked at the scars on his skin and her blood sang in her veins. 

He’d never frightened her. Not once she’d known him. No. It was never fear of Frank that made her hold back. 

She’d loved him, once. Loved him still, even now. Even now, when she’d drawn so far away that they were distant ships, passing in the night.

It hurts, seeing him in this new life he’d made, seeing what she’d been too stubborn, too scared to reach out and cling to. Seeing what she’d given up, what she’d abandoned because she was too broken then to try.

\----------

 

She drives out on a Friday night, with a gift wrapped in a bow tucked in the passenger seat beside her. Purple paper dotted with white polka dots, a bright red, gaudy bow, and every time she catches a glimpse of it in her peripheral she wants to hurl it out a window but she drives on, eyes drifting back to the road stretched out in front of her.

She thinks of her newest article while she drives. It’s the only thing that distracts her from the guilt that eats at her every time she makes this trip. It’s a good story, and someone is going to pay her a lot of money for it. Not Ellison - he never takes the stories she puts herself in danger for, hasn’t since he fired her, but between the law office and her freelance work she can almost afford to live in a place with security, and without any oversight from a boss constantly concerned for her safety she’s finally writing about shit that matters. Matt and Foggy have given up trying to talk her out of the dangerous situations she gets herself in, and Frank…

Well. Frank is here. Frank is… normal.

One of them had to be.

The article only distracts her for the first half of her drive. When she’d started down this path, every truth she revealed, every lie she laid bare had given her a rush, had made her feel alive, had given her purpose. It had made her feel useful, and for the barest hint of a moment she’d felt the guilt of her past ease - just a moment, nothing more, but for that tiny stretch of time it was almost like she could atone for her sins.

Every time she makes this drive she feels less and less attached to the life she leaves behind, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that Foggy has a kid on the way, that Matt spends more time at the office now than he does scaling rooftops and maiming bad guys. It doesn’t matter, because Karen was never meant for that life. Never meant for normal. She ruins everything she touches. She drowns her friends and family in grief and blood, in death and destruction, and she’s fucking good at it, even when she doesn’t want to be.

She’s so fucking tired. 

The last time she’d talked to him on the phone they’d bridged the silence with long, drawn out sighs, and she’d wondered, for a moment, what he’d do if she packed everything up and showed up on his doorstep. Nearly said the words - what if this was the last trip? what if I just didn’t leave this time? what if…?

It only takes a single tank of gas to get into town.

He’d done that on purpose, she knows. She tries not to acknowledge it. Tries not to let it be relevant.

It’s been getting harder for years now.

The house on the corner has a coat of fresh paint, bright yellow with white accents. There are plants hanging from the front porch, leaves beginning to yellow as the weather cools; a baseball glove left abandoned on the swinging bench; and the bright orange van is parked on the street, as it always is when Karen comes into town.

She uses her fob to open up the garage, pulls in and has to hold back a snort because there are definitely more power tools in here than there had been last time. He’s been nesting again.

She takes a deep breath before she turns off the car and lets the garage door shut behind her.

Karen wonders, sometimes, what the neighbors think of her - the mystery woman who appears for two seperate weeks out of the year, and disappears just as quickly and quietly as she came. Wonders if they ever ask their helpful neighbor about her, wonders what he says. 

She remembers the fierce look in his eyes the first time he made it clear to her her life meant more to him than just about anything in this world, and she hopes he’s got a better poker face with the rest of the world than he ever had with her.

The door leading into the kitchen swings open before she’s completely out of the car, and Karen schools her face into a soft smile as she gathers up her bag and the gift. This is always the worst part - the pretending.

“Daddy, she’s here!”

Karen lets out a small huff of laughter when the girl launches herself off the top step and right into Karen’s arms, but she tucks her limbs around her and squeezes tight.

With her eyes closed and her face hiding in the riot of thick brown hair, the weight of Jaime feels especially stark, this time. She’s all gangly limbs now, her wrists locked all the way around Karen’s back, and she weighs enough that Karen struggles to hold her up. 

Jaime doesn’t let go, not right away. She holds on longer than usual, long enough that Karen wonders just how much she’s figured out with eight years under her belt and the frankly terrifying streak of curiosity she’d inherited.

When Jaime finally lets go she gathers up the present and Karen’s bag, hefts the latter over her shoulder, and leads Karen up the stairs and into the house. It’s a beautiful house, and she’s always thought so, always been secretly amused by the eye for design Frank had, the delicate colors and the crown molding he’d put in himself, the light airy curtains and the bay window loaded down with oversized pillows, the tile backsplash in the kitchen and the glass cabinets displaying china.

This isn’t Frank Castle’s house. Not really. Frank Castle had died long before. This house was all Castiglione. 

Jaime makes a noise of frustration just out of view, and Karen pokes her head around the frame of the doorway into the kitchen, catches sight of broad shoulders and wild, curling hair - longer than she’s seen it in a while, the grey more pronounced than she remembers it being.

“--someone’s gotta watch the sauce, smartass, or we’re all having cereal for dinner.”

Jaime’s already climbing a stool set by the stove, and she snatches the spoon from her father’s hand with the practiced ease of someone who’s done this before. Karen’s chest feels like it’s being crushed, as she watches them together. She’s thankful, at the very least, that Jaime looks so much like her dad - dark hair, dark eyes, dimples that will get her out of more trouble than Karen wants to think about. “I’ll stir. I’m better at it than you anyway.”

Frank cuffs her ‘round the ear (and there it is, one of those details. She remembers the way his finger had curled around her tiny little ear, the wonder in his eye, the gruff way he’d cleared his throat and the look he’d given Karen, one she’d read as ‘Thank Christ she didn’t get my ears.’), turns, wiping his hands on the towel over his shoulder, and Karen blinks to clear her eyes, sucks in a deep breath, and waits. 

He comes to her - always that way, never the other way around, and they’d always both been okay with that. The kiss he presses to her cheek is soft and quiet and she wraps her arms around him, pretends she doesn’t see Jaime peeking over her shoulder right before she closes her eyes.

“‘S good to see you,” he says, low and whisper soft against her neck, and Karen presses her lips into the towel on his shoulder instead of digging her face into the skin of his neck. The five o’clock shadow would scratch at her forehead, and the cologne he wears would linger on her skin, and Jaime might think that meant something, anyway. 

She clears her throat when she steps away, notices the way his eyes linger on her but his hands don’t, and she did this - she made this choice, and she made it a long time ago. 

They fall into the same old habits they’re used to, after that, and maybe it takes Karen a couple seconds longer than usual to tear her eyes away from the salt and pepper in Frank’s beard, and maybe she lets her hands linger on Jaime’s shoulder, and maybe she thinks ‘maybe’ more times than she’s ever allowed herself before.

Jaime’s laugh is loud and bright, her arms thrown wide as she uses wild gestures to demonstrate the action in the story she’s telling. When Frank hands her a glass of wine she doesn’t snatch it away, she lets her fingers linger against his for just a moment, and doesn’t miss the pause in Jaime’s story - a short and quick one, her recovery swift, but they all notice it all the same, and Frank ducks his head, runs a hand through his hair, and the gesture is so fucking familiar it makes Karen ache with the force of it.

...what if I made the wrong choice? she thinks, when she catches his eye and he holds her gaze.

They say grace before they eat, each of the Castiglione’s hands grasped in her own, and Jaime talks through the whole meal, clearly well aware that the only time she’ll get away with talking with her mouth full is while Karen is here to hear it. Not even a mild scolding from Frank, and Karen knows he runs a tight ship, most of the time. 

Two times a year is hardly any time at all, and even though she talks to them both on the phone, he knows just as well as she does that it’s not the same. Knows better than her, maybe. Karen never has to deal with the fallout when she leaves. Just her own battered soul and the guilt that’s driven her for the last few decades. 

Jaime drags them both outside after dinner, makes Frank play catch with her so Karen can see her pitch. 

She watches and she smiles and she makes a show of clapping the first time the balls hits the webbing in Frank’s glove with a loud smack, and Frank makes a show out of it, pulling off his glove to massage his hand, chasing Jaime around the yard when she tells him not to be a drama queen. She watches, and she smiles, and inside she’s screaming.

Karen excuses herself to the bathroom while they wash up before dessert. Her reflection in the mirror is the same as it’s always been, and she stares hard, sucking in deep breaths of air to keep from sobbing, the noise masked by the running water in the sink. 

Twelve years ago, Karen had known the path she was meant to tread. She’d have moved up in the ranks of her job, slowly but surely, maybe she might have even gotten an office of her own, one day. She’d meet a nice man, a man who would never know about her past, never meet her family. They’d settle down, she’d leave her job, they’d have a couple kids and maybe, maybe, they might stay happy. And maybe they wouldn’t, but they’d stick it out for the kids, and eventually Karen might find peace, in that life, even if happiness wasn’t on the table for her.

But then there’d been her curiosity getting the better of her, and as usual, it all spiraled from there. 

It’s what you do, Karen.

Paxton Page has been dead for five years but he still lingers in her mind, reminds her of her failings - as a daughter, as a sister, as a friend. What kind of mother could she have ever been?

There’s a knock on the door that startles her out of her thoughts, and she wipes at her nose, settles her features, turns off the water and unlocks the door to find Frank on the other side, staring at her like he knows every dark thought in her head. 

“You good?”

Karen nods, and he doesn’t call her on it. He might have, once. He’s changed. Maybe not changed, exactly, but… he’s restrained, now. Doesn’t leap into every fight like it’s his last, doesn’t scorch the earth with his advice and wisdom. 

“Jaime hates cake now, by the way, so we’re lighting candles on apple pie.”

Karen chokes out a laugh, sinks into his shoulder when he wraps an arm around her waist, stays there for a moment too long. She buries her face in his neck, damn the consequences, and breathes deep, lets the smell of him settle into her very bones, lets his beard scratch at her skin, lets his breath puff out warm against her skull. He lets her, like he always does, gives her this moment and every other and never asks for anything in return, even though he should, even though she knows - she knows he wants to.

Jaime sings along when they break out the pie, her voice as warbly and off tune as her dads, her last ‘me’ dragging out long after both Frank and Karen have stopped singing, her eyes bright and wide, darting between the two of them like she’s waiting for them to tell her something. The fact that they don’t doesn’t seem to stop her enthusiasm, which she’s grateful for. Tomorrow they’ll do something, just the three of them. Go to the zoo two towns over, or hike some new trail Frank found in his spare time, and they’ll eat dinner early and Karen will leave and it will be just like every other time. 

Except.

“Open your presents, kiddo.”

She opens Frank’s first - exclaims over the new glove and the team jersey like it’s the greatest gift she’s ever received, throws the jersey on over the dress she’s wearing, tags still attached. She grins like a fool for the picture Karen takes, dimples on full display, deep brown eyes sparkling with the kind of joy only a kid ever really has. 

She opens Karen’s gift slowly, handling the bow with care, popping it on Franks head with a grin before she continues - fingers sliding through the tape instead of ripping. She’s always been particular with Karen’s gifts, like this, and Karen knows there’s a hope chest in the spare room filled with cards and folded wrapping paper, stored for safekeeping, like a reminder of Karen when she’s gone. 

The moment of truth passes slowly as Jaime’s eyes take in the text on the tickets in front of her - Karen thinks a moment too late that she probably should have asked Frank’s permission before she did this. She sees them two times a year and that was the deal they made. That was the one thing he asked of her, and he’s never asked for anything else, and she probably should have asked him if this was okay.

He eyes her carefully once he’s gotten a good look at them, and she can’t tell what it is she’s seeing - anger, maybe, or annoyance. “Dad! This is in like, a month! Are we really going?”

He blinks, turns his gaze away from Karen, and snatches up the tickets. She can see him counting them - one, two, three - see the way he squares his shoulders and the way he bites back a frown as he ruffles Jaime’s hair. “You think I’d let you miss your first Broadway show?”

“Nuh uh!”

“Nuh uh’s right. Once in a lifetime experience, right there.” He shoots a look at Karen, jaw twitching. “Tell Karen thank you.”

She does, profusely, clinging to Karen’s waist, already planning out the very full day she plans to have, all the places they have to go before the show. Frank’s jaw continues to tic.

It takes an age to get her to bed - she demands a story from each of them, fights a losing battle with Frank to wear the jersey to bed, decides to brush her teeth a second time, and then begs Karen to sit with her until she falls asleep. Jaime reaches for her hand and Karen lets her, waits until her eyes are closed to study the shape of her nails and the line of her nose. 

When Jaime turned three, she’d tucked her into bed almost exactly like this, had waited til she fell asleep before she let her finger trace the sweep of her chubby cheeks. Back then Frank had leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest and his disappointment in her much closer to the surface, even when he tried so hard to hide it. “At least you gave her a nose that wasn’t mine,” he’d said, and Karen had left that night, tears streaming down her face and half certain it was the last time she’d ever see them. 

He’d called two days later, told her he understood, that he’d agreed to this. Told her he didn’t blame her. She’d almost believed him. It took him another month to convince her he still hoped he’d see her for her second trip of the year. Took her another to convince herself to go.

All told, it’s at least two hours later that Karen finally slides into the kitchen to find Frank staring at the tickets in his hand. The look he gives her is stormy, the kind she remembers from arguments along the river, the wind biting despite their layers, their words digging deep into old wounds. 

“What the hell is this?”

Defensive is perhaps not the most accurate term for her next words, but it’s somewhere in the description. “She’s been talking about it for months, and I just… look, I can return them or I can get her something else or ─.”

“You know that’s not what I’m talking about. You know that’s ─ Jesus, Karen, you think she’s stupid kid?” 

And there it is. The phone calls have been more frequent, since her last trip, more of Jaime’s life laid out to her over texts and emails and conversations that last for hours. She’s known for a while now that it was a bad idea, but it’s been harder and harder to let them live their lives separate from hers. Harder to hear about them from the sidelines. 

“Don’t do this to her if you don’t mean it. Don’t ─ you can’t just ─.” The pause he takes is long, knuckle digging at a spot behind his ear, a spot that once upon a time had been a favorite of hers to scratch at, with his head in her lap while she read through case files. “She’s not stupid, Karen.”

“I know. I know that.”

“Then what the hell is this?”

She’d bought the tickets on a whim, an hour after her conversation with Jaime had ended, her eyes wet and her heart heavy as she remembered the way she’d felt, just a tiny bundle of arms and legs and flesh and blood, new and fresh and innocent. She’d bought the tickets and she’d thought to herself ‘maybe’.

Karen turns to the fridge, reaches in for the beer he always has stocked in the back corner ─ her beer, not the kind he usually drinks, but it’s always there regardless of the time of year. They both live on ‘maybe’, some days.

He accepts a bottle of his own, watches her as she paces, waits, quiet and patient ─ and there’s that restraint she still has a hard time recognizing in his face. “Do you remember that diner? What you said to me, that night?”

She takes a swig and feels the desperation eking out of her, hopes he understands a decade plus on what she’s trying to say as she crosses the kitchen to stand before him.

“Said a lot of things. Both of us said a lot of things, that night.”

“Yeah.”

The silence kills her in a way it never has before around him. She’s desperate for something, some hint or sign, some indication of what the hell he’s thinking. He’s been an open book to Karen for a long time, but she’s been losing the ability to read him for years now.

“Two hands, yeah?” He sounds resigned, more than anything, and Karen wants to take back the last decade of her life. She’s never done this, never given either one of them the chance to move beyond ‘maybe’, but he hasn’t been with another woman since Jaime was born and Karen’s last attempt at distracting herself from the life just waiting for her, a tank of gas away, had ended with some drunken fumbling on her couch and a few unanswered phone calls from a sweet guy who didn’t need her bullshit in his life.

She nearly crumbles, just then, her throat so dry she can’t even swallow down the lump stuck there. 

She’d been four months in before they even realized, life so bogged down with chaos and destruction that she hadn’t even fucking noticed, and when Curtis had pulled her aside halfway through bandaging a wound on her side and told her she might have just lost a baby she’d laughed in his goddamn face. 

The look in Frank’s eye a week later when he found her dry-eyed and staring at the bathroom wall with a pregnancy test in her hand - the look when he’d held her hand and stared at her belly and she’d known, deep down, that he could be better, that he deserved this - that look was the same look he is giving her now. Terrified. Ready.

Karen kneels between his knees, fingers sweeping the bottle from his hands to set it on the table beside her own abandoned one. He swallows heavily when she reaches for his hands. She doesn’t reach for him - always the other way around, except this time. This time and ─

“Karen…”

“I wanted this for you. I wanted - I wanted to see you like this. More than anything in the world, I wanted you to find peace, but I…”

He presses his forehead to hers, doesn’t fight the pull ─ he never has ─ and this too is familiar. 

“I wasn’t ready to let it go. The anger, the guilt, the… fuck, Frank, I gave birth in an abandoned cabin on the run from the mob. What kind of life could I have given her?”

He chuckles, then, a dark thing that should be frightening but is more comforting than anything else. “You wanna throw those stones? In this glass house?”

He’d let it go. He’d let it all go for the sake of the little girl asleep in her bed upstairs, and she’s hated him for it for so long. Hated herself more. But then that’s always been the problem with her.

“Does she know?”

He hums, low in his throat. “She’s never asked.”

“That’s a yes if I’ve ever heard one.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.” It’s all so fucked up - all of it, the last twenty years of her life all screaming at her to run, to get away, to keep them safe by never coming back, but she’s so fucking tired and there’s a life here, if she’ll only be brave enough to take it.

She squeezes his hands, pulls herself closer in the process, thick wet tears dropping into his lap while she takes a deep steadying breath. “You gotta be sure. This ain’t ─ it ain’t just me. I can survive it, Karen, have been for years, but you break her heart and it’ll destroy all of us.”

She thinks of the article sitting on her desk, ready for the highest bidder, thinks of the months of research that went into it. Thinks of the sound of Jaime’s laughter, and the way her fingers are long and slim and the knuckles wrinkle just like hers do. Thinks the article would make pretty good kindling for the fire pit in the backyard. 

He shouldn’t let her. He should fight her on this, but he’d begged her to at least come see her daughter twice a year, and he’d express mailed her a key to the house before he’d even moved in. She’d told him once that she looked at him and all she’d seen was endless, echoing loneliness but she’d been describing a mirror and he’d always known that. 

“I hate the stupid hipster coffee shop on Main Street more than anything in this world,” is all she can think to say, stupid, nonsensical, grasping for a lifeline.

“We’ll open up our own. Right across the street. All we serve is coffee, black. No cream. No pastries.”

He sounds so serious that she has to look up, has to catch his gaze and see the gleam in his eye. 

Her hand has a mind of it’s own, unfurls itself from his grasp to cup his jaw, finger sliding along the dimple there like if she catches it just right it’ll anchor her to this moment forever. 

“I don’t know if I can stand seeing that hideous orange van every day for the rest of my life.” He blows out a breath through his nose that ruffles her hair, but she doesn’t break eye contact, doesn’t backtrack her words, and he swallows, nods his head, just a quick, steady motion that shakes the ground beneath her feet.

“Easy. We paint it all black. Get the paint shop next to the pet store to put a skull on it. Real subtle.”

“Subtlety was always your strong suit.”

There’s a small smile on his face - it’s one she’s seen before, on visits to this house, but never directed at her. “Okay,” he says, and ducks his head again to bump his forehead against her own.

“Okay.”

\----------

 

The fallout is… less intense than she’d expected. 

She tells Foggy and Matt the day before they meet Jaime for the first time. Jaime has somehow managed to convince Frank that the jersey is appropriate wear for Broadway, and he hadn’t thought to bring backup clothes, and Karen’s apartment is half packed, boxes stacked one on top of the other while Jaime jumps from room to room singing ‘Popular’ over and over like she’s been possessed by The Good Witch herself. She still can’t hold a tune to save her life. Frank’s wearing a tie. She’s known him for more than ten years, has never seen him in a suit, and it is… distracting.

If his shit eating grin is anything to go by, he knows it, too. He doesn’t even try to hide it, which somehow makes it worse, if that’s even possible.

She’s halfway through a box of dresses, cursing herself for not thinking to leave at least one of them unpacked, when she hears the knock at her front door, and it’s too late to stop it, really, but she takes off for the front door anyway, prepared to jump into the line of fire if necessary.

Foggy takes one look at Jaime, giving him the stink eye from down the hall - darts his gaze to Frank, holding the door open for him, and finally catches sight of Karen. 

“What the hell?”

“Language,” Frank says, and there’s something in his eyes, something that tells her he’s taking complete and utter delight in this moment. 

Karen feels the laughter bubbling up, tries and fails to hide her grin. She’d told them the whole story, waited for their judgement and exclamations and maybe even an attempt to commit her. It hadn’t come. “We may not know what your secrets are, Karen, but we know when you’re keeping them,” Matt had said. She’d spent a good chunk of time answering every inane question Foggy asked, once he got past the seven “What?”s he couldn’t tamp down, but they’d listened, and they’d nodded, and they’d asked if they could meet her. Them. 

“Dad, you said ‘fuck’ twice yesterday.”

All high ground completely lost, Frank shoots his daughter a look from beneath his brows that used to cow bikers and gang members and mobsters alike, but she blinks back at him, already halfway across the room with a hand outstretched to introduce herself to Foggy.

Matt gives Frank a crisp nod, Frank rolls “Mur-dock” off his tongue like a curse word, Foggy comments incredulously on the fact that Frank is by far the oldest of them and still has the most hair - the universe rights itself and Jaime only says ‘fuck’ two more times all day. 

“We should curb that habit, right?” Frank asks, curling his hand around Karen’s waist as Jaime parts whole crowds a few steps ahead of them. 

‘We’ is strange and uncomfortable and the ghosts of her past scream at her, but she firmly shuts them up as she drops her head to his shoulder. “We definitely should.”

“Tomorrow, though.”

Karen hums, Frank hums back, and the murmurs of her past fade into a buzz at the back of her mind, ready and waiting but hushed for the moment. 

She thinks of the look on Jaime’s face when they’d sat her down at the kitchen table and stumbled through a difficult and stuttered explanation, the both of them struggling to get through it all, talking over each other at points. Jaime had stared at them when they finally trailed off into silence. “Duh.” And that had been that. 

They’re all due for years of very extensive therapy, and Karen isn’t sure how that’s going to work, considering all the things they can’t tell a damn soul.

That night as she tucks Jaime into bed and runs her finger down the line of Jaime’s nose, Jaime reaches for her hand, scrunches up her face, and stares Karen down. “I gotta tell you a secret.” 

Karen thinks of all the secrets she’s told in her life, all the secrets of her own she’s carried, and leans down, giving her daughter a solemn nod.

Jaime takes a deep breath. “I used to be real mad at you,” she starts, tumbling over the words like she wants them gone from her mouth. Like they leave a bad taste. “Sometimes I think I’m still mad.”

Karen swallows, sucks in a breath, and nods. “That’s okay. It’s okay to be mad at me.”

“But Daddy used to tell me that my mom was hurting, and she had to get better. And if we hoped really hard, maybe we could help her hurt less.”

It’s like a knife to the heart. She knows he’d never promised Jaime anything. Never given her false hope. Knows he’d carried that for years. 

“That’s how I knew it was you.” It’s a quiet pronouncement, no strings or bells attached, just a solemn confession from someone too wise for her age. She learned that from both of them, she’s sure. “You were even sadder than Daddy, but sometimes when I hoped extra hard, it seemed like you hurt less.”

Karen smiles, lets the tears fall from her eyes without wiping them, wonders how the hell her kid grew up with this much blindingly brilliant optimism. Karen’s not sure she ever had it, doesn’t know how Frank had come by it.

“You helped so much. More than anything in the world.” 

That seems to satisfy Jaime. “I can still be mad at you sometimes though, right?”

A huff from the doorway causes them both to look up to where Frank is standing, leaned against the frame. The tie is loose around his neck, a few buttons undone, and they haven’t really broached the subject of how they plan to fit back into each other’s lives yet, but she knows she’s going to spend too much time tonight wishing there wasn’t a kid down the hall. 

“Families get mad at each other all the time, kiddo.” He pushes off the frame, slides across the room to the other side of the bed, leans down to press a kiss to her forehead.

“But they still love each other.”

It sounds like a conversation they’ve had before, like she’s reciting it back to him, like she’s heard it a million times. “Always,” he tells her, eyes on Karen, and the tears that had just started to dry return in force. 

“Always,” she echoes. 

\----------

They burn the article in the fire pit the same night they transfer her last box from the moving pod. She sends an outline of her research to Ellison, tells him to give the story to one of their beat guys who’s been chomping at the bit for a byline, and deletes all trace of it from her computer. 

Karen writes a book under a pseudonym, a crime novel with a spunky reporter and a cast of misfits that does terribly on it’s first publication but gains a massive following the year Jaime turns sixteen. By then Jaime knows more about her family’s past than most kids ever learn, and the three of them decide together to option off the book completely. 

Frank never paints the van. “Subtlety is dead,” he tells her, the same day The National Enquirer publishes an expose on a supposed sighting of The Punisher serving tables somewhere in Toronto.

The ghosts don’t leave her. Not completely. There are days she looks in the mirror and doesn’t recognize the smile on her face, days that she feels like she somehow managed to cheat the system. Days the past buzzes loud in the back of her mind. 

She leaves twice a year. No more than that, but never less. There’s no deal, this time, just a kiss to her daughters cheek, a hand dipped into Frank’s hair, fingers drifting over her favorite spot behind his ear, an unspoken promise that she’ll be back. 

She doesn’t tell them where she goes, and they don’t ask - the cemetery that houses the Page family, the renovated apartment building that had once been a hidden slum, a construction site on land that used to belong to Wilson Fisk. She goes to face her ghosts, and they scream and wail and curse her name, but they’re wrong about her. 

They’re wrong, and she’s proved them so - has built and created and loved without fear, and she wants them all to know it.


End file.
